Rolex Oysterquartz

1. 1970s

   Without the quartz crisis there would be no Oysterquartz, and that makes its story special. Until well into the 1960s, the Swiss watch industry kept refining its mechanical movements. Ruggedness and accuracy rose steadily, so the new technology on the rise either went unnoticed or wasn't wanted.

   Manufacturers like Seiko were already working intensively on quartz movements. They reached accuracy no one had seen before, and because a battery powered the movement for over a year, the watches were almost maintenance-free.

   The technology, extremely expensive at first, went mainstream in the early 1970s. With its new precision, a modern look like the LED and later LCD digital display, and new possibilities, quartz watches became a real hype. Who doesn't remember the cult Casio calculator watches that almost everyone wanted? Classic mechanical watches suddenly seemed old-fashioned and out of date, and hardly anyone asked for them anymore.

   That started a crisis that threatened the very existence of the classic watch industry. Many well-known companies, especially in Switzerland, went bankrupt, and the number of employees dropped massively: of the original 90,000 jobs, only 30,000 were left a few years later. Companies that refused to go along with the trend, or couldn't carry the development costs, disappeared during the quartz crisis.

2. 1977

   Late 1977 · Rolex bets on its own quartz movement

   Rolex, too, felt compelled to break with tradition and bring a quartz model to market.

   Quartz wasn't completely new to Rolex: in 1970 the Date 5100 appeared, the company's first quartz watch. Its movement came from the Beta 21 project of the Centre Électronique Horloger, in which Rolex took part with other manufacturers. The watch was only available in gold, it was expensive, and production was around 1,000 pieces. In 1972 Rolex left the project and spent five years developing its own movement, which appeared in the Oysterquartz in late 1977.

   

   

   Models and movements

   Unlike many other manufacturers, Rolex stayed true to its course and put an in-house quartz movement in the Oysterquartz. It's considered one of the best battery-powered quartz movements ever built.

   The Oysterquartz came in these versions:

   • Oysterquartz Datejust in stainless steel (ref. 17000), in stainless steel with a white gold bezel (ref. 17014) and two-tone in stainless steel/yellow gold (ref. 17013)
   • Oysterquartz Day-Date in yellow gold (ref. 19018, 19028, 19048, 19148) and white gold (ref. 19019, 19049)

   

   

   The Oysterquartz Datejust ticked with the 5035 movement, the Day-Date with the 5055. Rolex dipped into its own parts bin and took large parts of the mechanics of the 3035 automatic movement for the 5035. Those mechanics were already in many other Rolex models like the Submariner and Datejust, and were extended with electronics and a stepper motor. That made the new movement especially easy to service and long-lived.

   Another peculiarity concerns the 5035: while the Day-Date's 5055 was always chronometer-certified, the 5035 was only certified from 1981. The start of certification came with a small movement optimization: the quartz crystal in the oscillator circuit got a tuning fork shape. Movements with a tuning fork crystal are called Mark II, and the "old" uncertified ones Mark I.

   The case looked very different from the familiar Rolex cases, even though the classic features were all there: fixed bezel, screw-down case back and screw-down crown for optimal water resistance. The Oyster bracelet with folding clasp was completely reworked too, and fit visually with the more angular case and its strong chamfers. The bi-color Datejust (17013) and the one with the white gold bezel (17014), on the other hand, always came with a Jubilee-style bracelet, and the yellow gold and white gold Day-Date with a President-style bracelet.

   

3. 1978

   The Oysterquartz was built so ruggedly that it did full justice to Rolex's reputation as a "tool watch". It even went on expeditions: in May 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. An almost impossible undertaking, but the two were the first people to make the climb without supplemental oxygen. On Messner's wrist: the Rolex Oysterquartz, which stood up to the harsh conditions and worked flawlessly at over 8,000 meters in freezing cold.

   

   

   A few celebrities were also seen with the Oysterquartz, for example the conductor Lorin Maazel, later music director of the New York Philharmonic, with an Oysterquartz Day-Date.

   Below are some interesting scans from the internal dealer magazine "Die Oyster", with technical information and sales arguments for the Oysterquartz (issue no. 3/78 from December 1978):

   

4. 1983

   After a long dry spell, the end of the quartz crisis began around 1983, when the two badly battered companies ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG) and SSIH (Société Suisse de l'Industrie Horlogère) merged. The driving force was the business consultant Nicolas Hayek, later the longtime chairman of the Swatch Group.

   Hayek recognized early on the potential of highly automated movement production. He saved money by cutting the number of parts in a Swatch from 125 to 51, and with the idea of a fashionable watch he hit exactly the right moment to revive and strengthen the Swiss watch market for the long term.

   As prices for quartz watches fell and they became widely available, interest in the classic mechanical watch rose again too. Especially in the premium and luxury segment, people suddenly appreciated the high-precision manufacturing of mechanical movements again and were willing to pay more for these works of art "with a real soul". They let you stand out from the crowd again, and weak points like the less-than-perfect accuracy and the comparatively short power reserve were accepted again.

   

5. 2001

   Last certificates in 2001 · from the 2002 and 2004 catalogs

   The number of quartz watches sold in the premium segment collapsed accordingly. Matthias from the R-L-X forum did the research: in 2001 Rolex had only 573 of 762,174 movements certified as chronometers in quartz, that's 0.075 percent. In the years before, too, Rolex's annual number of COSC quartz certificates was under 1,000, so an estimated under 0.15%.

   The last certificates were applied for and issued in 2001, after which the Oysterquartz was discontinued. The steel version disappeared from the catalogs in 2002 and the other models in 2004. The last production probably took place in 2002, since no watches after the K series are known. A new generation of quartz movements, supposedly already finished, with calibers 5335 and 5355, never went into series production because of the very low unit sales and for business reasons.

6. Today

   By now the Oysterquartz is a rarity. You hardly see it on a wrist, and it's rarely offered for sale.

   With the Land-Dweller, Rolex introduced a watch in 2025 whose case and integrated bracelet remind many of the Oysterquartz. Inside, though, is a mechanical movement.

7. Buying

   Condition · service · market

   Good, unpolished examples are hard to find these days. The case shape with its sharp edges and chamfers changes more through heavy wear than on classic models, and the edges round off a lot. Unprofessional polishing makes this worse. A rounded case loses much of the charm of the original Oysterquartz and can hardly be restored, if at all. When buying, pay special attention to the condition of the case and bracelet.

   Servicing can get expensive, too. If the E-block needs to be replaced, the price of a service quickly reaches 1,500 euros and above (as of 2017, current service costs unknown).

   Still, because of the quartz movement, the Oysterquartz isn't particularly popular or well-known right now and, in my opinion, gets far too little attention. You get an extremely rugged watch with a fantastic (quartz) movement that was only made for a short time and in comparatively small numbers. It's assumed that only about 25,000 Oysterquartz were built across all models. The case is really good-looking, as the Land-Dweller shows too, and you don't see it on every corner. In short: for your money you get an awful lot of watch, just not a mechanical one.

8. Specs

   Here are the specifications of the 5035 and 5055 movements:

   Specifications of the 5035 and 5055 movements

   Caliber	5035	5055
   Used in	Rolex Oysterquartz Datejust	Rolex Oysterquartz Day-Date
   Module	32,768 Hz VCTCXO quartz	32,768 Hz VCTCXO quartz
   Functions	Hours, minutes, center seconds, date	Hours, minutes, center seconds, date, day of the week
   Chronometer	COSC (only from 1981)	COSC
   Integrated circuit	CMOS	CMOS
   Temperature compensation	✓	✓
   Battery	UCAR 357 silver oxide, 1.55 V	UCAR 357 silver oxide, 1.55 V
   Diameter	29.75 mm	29.75 mm
   Height	6.5 mm	7.1 mm
   Number of jewels	11	11
   Antimagnetic	✓ (1,000 oersted)	✓ (1,000 oersted)
   Hacking seconds	✓	✓
   Quick-set date	✓	✓

The scans of the catalogs and the magazine were provided by Prof. Rolex/Matthias from the R-L-X forum. Thank you!